I’m getting my copy of Spore on Tuesday next week! Woot! One of the ironies behind this game has been what it is trying to promote. In a lot of his presentations, Will Wright (the creator) have referred to the game as an excellent method through which one can explore and be familiar with the scientific concepts such as evolution, planetary properties and their balance, and the science of deep space exploration/travel. Spore’s logo by itself does a good job of making the spiral galaxy a ‘familiar’ image.

However, the ironic part (which is pointed out happily by many a religious nut) is that although the cell gene collection thing represents evolution, the actions of the cell (and later the creature and creatures) are controlled by an intelligent being, which is the player. In other words, even if it was evolution doing the work, it was still guided by intelligent design.

What a load of bull. Anyways, I made some quick lists to support the idea that;

the game is pro-science / evolution:

• The game portrays the evolution of a single celled organism into a complex creature.
• The game portrays how the creature grows into intelligence and civilization (much like our history).
• The game respects many scientific principles (injecting CO2 into the atmosphere raises a planet’s atmosphere, etc).
• The creator of the game says he loves science and wants to use Spore as a means of promoting it.

the game is pro-intelligent design (no, it’s not a science no matter how many papers you write) :

• There is a ‘guiding intelligence’ that is controlling the being/beings (The player is God).
• There is a trailer which sounds very much like it’s promoting intelligent design.

the game is just a bloody game:

• Well if the game supports any kind of intelligent design, it probably supports polytheism/milliontheism more than  monotheism. The creatures/civilizations in the game were created by millions of different players, whose creations are seamlessly downloaded into your client as you’re playing. So many Gods om-G!

Therefore the conclusion is, what Spore truly represents is, are you ready for it – an alien conspiracy theory. Yep. A bunch of aliens powerful enough to affect things without actually being noticed by the creatures, manipulating everything for some sick purpose. They’re only as powerful as demigods, coz they can’t change the laws of space-time. They have only one power, to directly control the actions of their own species.

Oh wait that would make our CPU the proper God since it is creating and maintaining the universe, and running the AI of all the other creatures. But then again it connects to a server to donwload creatures so that would make the server some kind of God nexus… and since Maxis runs the server, they would be a multiple-staffed Godhead? Will Wright would be the equal but supreme member of the Godhead? OMG is model accurate for real life? Maybe a gaming company runs our universe! Nvm.

Can’t wait to play the game!

It is scary how many of the things on this list I have read about since childhood. They’ve been spoken of by scientists for nearly three decades now, and in most cases more. It is scary how practically no major advance has been made in most of these areas (in terms of policy and public awareness). And it gets scarier every time we are reminded how real these problems are.

We are long overdue (by magnitude of several hundred years) for at least two things – the reversal of the earth’s magnetic field, and a “Deep Impact” or “Armageddon” (the latter being one of the dumbest movies ever) style asteroid hitting the earth. Note what he says, “It is not a question of IF, it is a question of WHEN and HOW BIG.”

And we’re rapidly and still actively destroying our ecosystem, strengthening the resistance of bacteria and other harmful micro organisms, and spreading powerful uncontrollable experimental genes that defy natural processes into the wild.

All the effort and money put into stupid, pointless, dick-inspired wars and posturing and political campaigning… If nothing else, it would be a huge irony and lesson for the survivors on the day that 90% of the world population is suddenly wiped out. Perhaps, letting nature take its course is the only way to actually save mankind from itself. And perhaps, long from now, ASS (alien space ship) Anterprise would explore our world, and study with some degree of sadness the lost civilization of the Earth.

Capitalism is a wonderful thing ain’t it, especially when you control enough politicians to give you big-money projects. I wonder where Malaysians ever got the impression that their country’s politics is unique when it comes to cronyism and government-assisted profiteering – it appears to be something that happens everywhere. Of course the severity of the problem is a different matter.

This article on Wired today : How NASA Screwed Up (And Four Ways to Fix It) discusses how NASA’s priority is messed up thanks to politicking. It’s been a known issue for a while now, but I’ve never seen anyone put it so succinctly.

Of course, “Keep money flowing to favored contractors and congressional districts” is not a formal NASA objective, but these words explain the agency’s core problem. Since the end of the Apollo glory days, NASA seems to have been driven by the desire to continue lucrative payments to the contractors behind manned spaceflight (mainly Boeing and Lockheed Martin) while maintaining staff levels in the congressional districts (mainly in Alabama, Florida, Ohio, and Texas) that are home to huge centers focused on manned missions. If the contractors and the right congressional committee members are happy, NASA’s funding will continue and NASA managers will keep their jobs. The space station project was built to give the shuttle a destination, keeping the manned-space spending hierarchy intact. With the space station now almost universally viewed as worthless, the manned-space funders need a new boondoggle. The moon-base idea, pushed by President Bush, fits the bill.

For myself and people like my friend William who believes that space is the next important frontier, it is sad to read stuff like this. Again, this could be just one person’s opinion, but I can’t help agreeing with him. The amount of money spent can only be justified by some serious, targeted, high-yield research. Or at least exploratory frontier research which answers important fundamental questions. How much weightlessness based research do we really need to do?

Perhaps Malaysia can show the way through introducing new activities at the space station. Heh – I guess that’s been bandied about enough by now, and we should probably drop it now that the plans have been changed (they sure sounded serious when they talked about the teh tarik though). But if they get really bored up there…